


i can wade grief

by overtureenvelops



Category: Wentworth (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/F, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-01
Updated: 2016-07-01
Packaged: 2018-07-19 08:48:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 778
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7354084
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/overtureenvelops/pseuds/overtureenvelops
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"i can wade grief, whole pools of it—i'm used to that. but the least push of joy breaks up my feet."</p>
            </blockquote>





	i can wade grief

**Author's Note:**

> nothing like a good ol' character study! enjoy this one. it's short but it has my heart wholly and completely. as usual: unedited, probably ugly. can't help it that the person i am at 2am doesn't understand punctuation. also, angst. just a little bit, just a warning.
> 
> based off of emily dickinson's "i can wade grief" which is 1000% about bea smith. part of it is in the summary. check it out.

She has always been told not to make waves. 

Ever since she was a kid, it was _keep your head down, don’t push it, don’t talk back,_ and so she didn’t. She played the game how she thought she was supposed to, skimming the surface of her potential and settling for a life that was leagues under what she deserved.

And now, here, in the moment when the life is draining out of her, she comes to the realization that she finally has something to do, someone to love, and something to look forward to. A reason to live, but a moment too late.

Truth is, she’s been drowning for awhile, and not just at the hands of Ferguson, either. Throughout her life she’s been continually confronted with tides that pull her under. Tides in the form of Harry and Jacs and Brayden, people who held her there until she had accepted the feel of the water as a second skin.

Over time she had trained herself to stay under for longer and longer, to be able to withstand the deepest depth without noticing. She could wade through Harry’s abuse, through Debbie’s death, even through a life sentence as long as she could fool herself into thinking she didn’t need air to survive.

She would survive instead, she had decided, by breathing in the power of being top dog—by taking in the responsibility of keeping the prison clean and not letting the drugs that killed her daughter seep through the walls to kill again. She would inhale the anxieties of the women and exhale a false sense of confidence, betraying what she felt every night behind closed doors, blade within reach.

It’s when Allie enters the picture that this changes, that makes Bea consider coming up for air. Having a person who genuinely cared about her wasn’t something that she was used to, wasn’t something that she had ever come in contact with before. It was a foreign concept that kept her up at night, that ran through her mind as the blade met the skin of her thigh, and that eventually washed away the feeling that she would never be enough. 

With Allie, her words flow without thought and she feels like she can breathe again. Like for the first time in as long as she can remember the air she lets into her lungs doesn’t taste of chlorine. Bea is immersed in something completely new, exciting, terrifying, and the problem is she doesn’t know if she remembers how to live with oxygen anymore. Everything about herself suddenly starts to feel backwards and wrong and jagged around the edges—so she runs.

She runs and she hides and she apologizes. She tries again and again not to make waves and to keep to herself, but Allie can sense that she’s in need of a rescue. She dives in after her with no thought to her own air supply, saves her with kind eyes and gentle touches and the promise of the calm after the storm.

Every look from Allie, every smirk, every soothing hand is a deep breath of fresh air that she’s not used to, and it scares her more than she cares to admit. Scares her that she would almost rather choose to float aimlessly in pools of grief—drenched in the familiarity of disappointment—than to take a seconds respite on the beaches of contentment.

And, of course, as Allie kisses her, as she breathes the possibility of hope and joy into her lungs, Bea starts to think that it’s safe. Safe to stop overthinking, to let herself be vulnerable, to be _loved_. 

Safe, she thinks, to evaporate.

Now, though, as she’s left without the option of fighting back, doomed to resign herself to the water she thought herself free of, she wonders if she could have done something different—if she had somehow brought this on herself, caught in a whirlpool of events doomed to repeat themselves, destined to lose the people she cares about no matter how hard she tries to hold on.

As her consciousness fades the thoughts of Allie grow stronger. A vision of a life she could have had takes over every sense. A life with Allie, with Deb, with love and security—a life without this prison that she will die in, even if not now. 

Exhausted, she stops resisting and accepts the water into her lungs, the feeling of Allie’s hand in hers the only memory she can hold onto as the edges of her vision blur. The corners of her lips twitch upward, briefly, muscles fighting to form a smile.

She is flooded with love.


End file.
